


Babel

by jane_x80



Category: NCIS
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 12:26:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5248223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_x80/pseuds/jane_x80
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is on painkillers and has language issues</p>
            </blockquote>





	Babel

**Author's Note:**

> I think Tony has great language skills and downplays it, so I wanted to write a piece about it. Also I like Gibbs as a strong paternal influence and tried to write this from Gibbs' POV. Disclaimer: I own nothing

Everybody knows that when Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo is on painkillers, at best he can be described as loopy. His mind flits around, thoughts landing fleetingly on one subject before moving on to another, like a demented, frenetic, ever-moving kaleidoscope. Perhaps that is how Tony’s mind works on a regular basis – perhaps the crazy jumping around is how he can look at disparate things and seemingly, out of thin air, come up with a sound logical reason to tie up the crime. That intuitive leap that no one else seems to be able to make, not even you. To uncover the crucial clue to solving the otherwise unsolvable. It’s what made you hire him all those years ago, and also made you keep him around, because he is an outstanding agent.

But back to the painkillers. They remove the filter between his brain and his mouth. You know he almost never takes them, and if he does, he hides himself away so as to not let anyone see under the masks, as Tony without filters can be – challenging. Tony faces the world armed with masks to hide himself. He wears expensive designer suits of armor, and plays up to his model good looks and fit, lean physique – most people come away thinking he is a shallow, selfish, flirty joker.

You know though, that behind that carefree mask of the playful, overgrown frat-boy whose biggest worry might be his next one night stand is an intelligent, devious, quiet, introspective, serious, deeply insecure, thoughtful, dark, angry and sometimes downright scary person, who hides that part of himself – internally you’ve dubbed this, the real Tony “Anthony” - from the world with iron control. The masks are what makes him so good at his job – he can talk to anyone, relate to anyone, charm everyone (men and women, you’ve seen it) and get information out of anyone, be it witnesses, perps, or his next date. Hell, he could even get you to talk to him about old hurts and painful personal stuff, and he calls you a functional mute. He turns those big green eyes to any witness or perpetrator (or you), and he plays them (you) like a violin.

Earlier today, he managed to push you out of the way of a speeding car and got himself clipped by it. He has some cracked ribs, has re-injured his bad knee (his old college football injury), and has somehow gotten (yet) another concussion. He somehow talked himself out of going to the hospital with the paramedics (see above about his ability to make people fall under his spell when he speaks), but part of that deal had included him taking some painkillers (in front of them, and you checked to make sure he swallowed them and didn’t just hide them under his tongue) and that he would spend the night at your house so you can do the requisite concussion checks. It will not assuage the guilt or the fear that you had in your heart when you heard the noises caused by his body being hit by the car (even if it turned out not to be a serious collision). But it will make you feel better to have him where you can see him to make sure that this agent, this man, this partner of almost fifteen (fifteen!) years of yours is safe under your roof. You do not ask him if Zoe will want to take care of him, as he doesn’t seem to be speaking about her lately.

Hence the whole painkillers, no brain-to-mouth-filtered Tony who is sitting on the basement steps, wearing his comfortable gray NCIS sweat pants and a faded OSU hoodie (you keep several of these of his in your guest room), nursing the one beer you have allowed him to drink tonight.

In the past, when his tongue is loosened by painkillers, he has told you painful things about his past, or funny things, or embarrassing things. But you know he feels safe in your house and over the years, he sometimes tells you those things even without the benefit of the painkillers. You treasure these moments and these nuggets of Anthony that he chooses to share with you.

But tonight, his secrets are safe. Even though his brain is surely moving from one topic to another and the little marbles in his head are spinning like the balls in a bingo machine, you aren’t able to follow his thoughts. Tonight, his brain has been scrambled enough by the painkillers and he has become so loopy that he doesn’t even realize that he’s skipping around not only in his usual way, the subject matter of his thoughts, but also the languages that he’s speaking. He’s switching from English to Spanish to Italian (and it seems that he has picked up what you think might be Hebrew, French, Arabic and Mandarin, but you cannot be sure).

That’s when you recall that although Tony comes off like the dumb jock who took one year of Spanish to fulfill his language requirement and paid some geek to do his homework and help him pass his class, he is actually fluent in three languages. You didn’t even realize just how fluent until tonight. And all the world traveling that he has done (those months searching for Ziva throughout the middle east, only to finally return home without her but with his spirit so crushed and in so much pain you didn’t even know how to help him, plus the months running around looking for Daniel Budd to avenge you getting shot – you don’t even want to think about how much he must have blamed himself for that, for not having your six as he would have thought he should, despite you repeatedly assuring him that it was not his fault) seems to have increased his facility with languages, as you can tell now.

You almost wish that Ziva the polyglot was here to hear this – she might have been able to follow most of what Tony was saying. Although given that Tony looks so sad, maybe it is good that she isn’t here to hear what deep, dark, painful secrets he might be letting go off tonight.

You hear quiet footsteps upstairs. Three figures appear at the top of the basement stairs. You see that McGee, Bishop and Ducky have come to see how Tony is.

Tony is still in his deep dark funk, speaking quietly in his mixture of languages, not noticing that you have visitors. You walk over to him and chuck your fingers under his chin. He pauses midsentence, and raises those brilliant green eyes to look you, his gaze full of pain, minus the usual filters or masks, and you fight the urge to hug him. Tony does not take it well when you are nice to him. But he looks like he desperately needs a hug, and you desperately want to be the one to give it to him.

You incline your jaw up the stairs to indicate that he has visitors. Even in his painkiller-induced haze, his grasp of your secret unspoken language (yet another language that Tony is fluent in) is impeccable. He looks up, momentarily blinking owlishly at the newcomers, before breaking into a heartbreakingly beautiful smile, like the first rays of sun at dawn. One of his unguarded, genuine smiles that you have to work really hard to earn and that most people never get to see. You can tell that Bishop is astounded – while she knows there is much more to Tony than meets the eye, she hasn’t been around the team long enough to see very much of Anthony. This might be the first time she’s seen this smile, and you can tell she won’t forget it.

“Hey Tony,” McGee says quietly, smiling back almost shyly. Even after all these years, Tony’s genuine smile can still almost reduce him to the stuttering, timid, probie that he used to be.

He greets them all happily, a stream of words flowing from his mouth, but has still not yet grasped the idea of staying in one language.

McGee and Ducky look at you with raised eyebrows and you shrug a wordless reply. Bishop looks ready to fall over. She has, of course, researched every member of your team (she is an Analyst at heart), but to read that Tony knows three languages on paper and to be exposed to the reality of it, especially the Tony-on-painkillers version of multilingualism, are two different things.

“Painkillers,” they both mutter quietly to Bishop. She nods sagely. You see her mentally filing information away.

“Come up, Tony, and let me give you a quick examination,” Ducky tells him.

Tony starts objecting and whining, and you only know this from his mutinous expressions and his tone of voice, as he is nimbly jumping around from language to language, in a way that only makes sense in his very special head.

“We brought pizza,” McGee says, trying to entice him.

Tony brightens up considerably, and looks to you for approval. You gesture upstairs with your chin ( _Go get checked out and eat pizza_ ) and hold out a hand to help pull him upright. “OK, Boss” he tells you, one of the few things he’s said tonight that is completely comprehensible. He takes your hand and lets you pull him to his feet, and begins to limp up the stairs.

Halfway up, he pauses and turns back to look at you. He tells you something (You think he is asking you to join them – but again you can try to keep up if he keeps to one language at a time, and his skipping around and the two shots of bourbon that you’ve already had this evening to calm your nerves about almost losing him today makes it hard for you to follow). You smile at him. _I’ll be right there._ He gives you that quiet shy smile (the one that makes you think what a sweet little boy he must have been and makes you sad somehow to have missed that part of his life) and a slight nod, and keeps on going up to his team.

When you come up a few moments later, you hear Ducky trying to get him to reply in English – or at least in one language at a time – as he tries to see to his injuries. But Tony seems confused – he doesn’t think he’s doing anything differently.

Eventually Ducky rewraps his knee tightly, gives him the all clear and he limps to the living room. You help yourselves to pizza (sausage, pepperoni, extra cheese – Tony’s favorite) and you can’t help but laugh while Tony tries to communicate with the group, unaware of his linguistic gymnastics. Soon you can all see that he is fading and fighting to stay awake.

Ducky ushers him to your guest room and to bed, and then the rest of you all have a cup of coffee together.

“Another close one,” McGee says quietly.

You sigh. You know. Another close one. While in recent years Tony has become less of a trouble magnet than when you started – a two-man team, so long ago – every time something happens to him, you all come together and sit and worry. While you do this for every member of your team, it seems to hit you harder when it’s Tony. He’s been with you the longest, and the one who has been most loyal to you (you called him your loyal Saint Bernard, once and made his week).

“This is the first time he’s gotten so loopy that he forgot to speak English though,” Ducky says.

You smile. “Not really. But it is the first time that he can’t seem to stick to one language from word to word,” you say. “He’s usually stuck to one language at a time before this.”

“Only DiNozzo,” McGee smirks.

“Never easy with him,” Ducky agrees. Seeing your concerned look, he immediately begins to assure you. “Anthony is fine, Jethro. I made him take more painkillers as his knee does look inflamed and it must really be hurting him, but he’s exhausted so hopefully he will just sleep it off.”

“Concussion checks with his current stream of consciousness language switches is going to be a bitch for you tonight,” Bishop pipes up.

McGee starts laughing at that, and suddenly you all crack up. After all these years, Tony can still surprise you all and make you laugh, even when he isn’t trying to do it. Soon, the party breaks up and everyone goes home.

You decide to go to bed after a quick concussion check. You get acceptable responses to your questions. And Tony falls back to sleep easily afterwards, sprawled on his front, face turned towards you, one hand folded beneath his chin. You take that opportunity to tuck him in (something he would never let you do if he were awake), and you run your fingers through his thick brown hair, a little sad that he has been keeping it short in recent years, and gently lay the back of your hand on his cheek. Unconsciously, he leans into your touch and sighs contentedly as he sleeps, and you flash back to your red-headed angel’s sleepy sighs, so like Tony’s, and you feel a pang. You lost Kelly years ago, and you could have lost Tony today. You shrug the pain away – because you didn’t lose Tony. He’s here. He’s fine. You lean down and give him a brief gentle hug (the one you’d wanted to give him earlier when he was so sad), and drop a soft kiss on the top of his head. You’ve kissed Abby this way openly for years, but nobody knows (not even Tony himself) that when Tony spends the night strung out on painkillers or passed out on booze in your guest room, you secretly get to kiss him this way, like you used to kiss Kelly.

You stand and just watch him sleep for a moment. The worry lines and laugh lines are wiped clean, and suddenly he looks so young again. He is still that beautiful boy that you gleefully stole away from Baltimore PD. He is the child of your heart, the son you never had.

“Good night, son,” you tell him quietly as you walk out.

“Love ya boss,” he mumbles in his sleep, which makes your heart jump, and that pang rise to the surface again.

You leave his door cracked open a little, although you know that he’s a grown man and wouldn’t be afraid of the dark like Kelly had been, and whisper “Love ya, kid” and you go to bed, setting your alarm for 2 hours later for the next concussion check.

You receive what you believe are acceptable responses to the usual concussion check questions throughout the night, although you try to stick to name-oriented questions (what is your name, what is the president’s name) as the ones requiring more complicated answers are still somewhat incomprehensibly linguistically mixed up.

In the morning, you are making pancakes, his favorite breakfast, when he comes downstairs, showered and dressed in jeans and a green button-down shirt that make his eyes look startlingly green, even greener than usual. Casual day. You like that as that means he is relaxed and not overly stressed out, and doesn’t require his designer suit of armor. He hasn’t bothered fixing his hair, so it’s standing up every which way, still damp from the shower. This is a testament to how much he has let his defenses down with you over the years – control over any and every situation is the only way he survived his childhood, and his entire life. He grunts at you (“good morning” in early-morning pre-caffeinated DiNozzo), goes straight to the coffee maker, pours himself a mug, rummages in the fridge for the hazelnut creamer that you keep around just for him, and sits down at the kitchen table. You can tell that his knee is still bothering him, but he is covering up the limp.

“You taking your painkillers this morning?” you ask him after you see him take a couple of swigs of coffee. No sense poking the bear until he gets some coffee in him.

“Nah, you know they make me loopy,” he brushes the question aside. You fight the urge to smile, suddenly so glad that he’s back to speaking English. He catches the look in your eye though – he’s extra perceptive, is your Tony – and suddenly looks a little worried. “How nutty was I last night, and what crazy movie can I expect on my desk at work today?” he says suspiciously.

You smirk and fix him a plate, setting it down in front of him. You cannot help but hum “Wind beneath my wings” under your breath, and he gives you a classic Gibbsian glare (worthy of you) as he douses his pancakes with syrup.

“It wasn’t too bad,” you assure him. “You didn’t say anything we could really understand.”

He frowns. “That sounds bad. Was I that incoherent?”

You fix yourself a plate, and sit down across from him. “Nah. You just weren’t speaking English.”

“But I wasn’t like babbling in like jabberwocky, was I? Or god forbid, Klingon???”

“I didn’t know you spoke Klingon, DiNozzo.”

“Picked it up from McStarfleet,” he grudgingly admits, making you grin.

You relent and tell him, “No, you just switched around so much we couldn’t follow you. No harm done. Nobody really knows what you said last night.”

He continues to eat, quietly mulling things over. “OK, I guess I can live with that.”

After breakfast, you hand him the bottle of ibuprofen and he dry swallows three in one go (you know he's hurting pretty badly to take three). Then he goes to fix his hair, grabs his gear, and hitches a ride with you into work.

When Bishop and McGee walk in a half hour after you get there (you like to get to work bright and early), they greet you cheerfully. Tony throws them a grin and a quiet “Good morning,” as he is deep into some paperwork that you know he feels that he’s behind on, given that he didn’t get to work late last night on account of the accident and the painkillers. Tony does do his best work at night, after all.

They stand at his desk, waiting for him to acknowledge them. “What’s up Probies?” he looks up at them. You pretend to be busily working at your desk, and not eavesdropping or watching them. You feel certain that Tony knows you’re listening though.

“You feeling OK this morning?” McGee asks him.

“I’m fine now, guys,” he deflects. “Get to work.”

“Can I ask you to translate something for me?” Bishop says. “It will only take two minutes.”

“Ever hear of Google translate, Probish?” Tony pouts.

“Please?” Bishop uses her puppy dog eyes right back at him.

Tony sighs. “Fine. What is it?”

Bishop whips out her phone and begins playing a recording. You hear McGee asking Tony a question about a movie he wants to see (you realize it is part of the conversation at dinner last night), and Tony replies in his mish mash of languages.

Tony looks stunned, and you see color rush to his cheeks. He throws a questioning look at you. _Is that me on painkillers? Did you know about this?_

You shrug a shoulder and make a little moue at him. _Yeah that was you, and I didn’t know she recorded you._

He looks at Bishop but he can see that although McGee is amused, Bishop is genuinely curious. She isn’t trying to make fun of him. They listen to the recording, perhaps a three minute recording during which time loopy-on-painkillers Tony says many words in many languages.

He is silent for a minute after the recording ends, employing his best blank expressionless mask. Finally he says “Huh.”

“You were like that the whole time we were there last night,” Bishop tells him.

“Huh,” he repeats quietly.

McGee starts laughing. “Only you can silence yourself, Tony,” he says gently.

“So, can you translate now that you’re back to normal?” Bishop asks him again.

For a moment, Tony looks like he wants to just start chewing on aspirin. But then a mask falls into place (the joker mask, you can see), and he grins easily at them. “Strangely enough, I almost sort of made sense, I think. Kinda. Almost. McGeek, I told you that while _Pan’s Labyrinth_ is an amazing movie, and to not forget to have a boxful of tissues when you watch it, the upcoming movie _Pan_ does not look as promising. _Peter Pan_ the book, though, is highly recommended. And I know someone who can teach you to play the pan-pipes. And she can also play the irish whistle, swear to god, that is a real instrument. Plus she was quite flexible,” he clears his throat and blushes again at that. “Also, I think I may have mentioned something about hummingbirds and nectar, and then maybe nectarine? And caterpillars and silkworm? And wanting to go on vacation somewhere warm and beachy? And something about fingers? I dunno. It’s pretty random. I didn’t know that I even knew the word for ‘pan-pipes’ in Italian.”

“Where did you pull that shit from?” McGee asks. You all know he means the weird language bit, not the weird subject matter bit – Tony was on painkillers after all. “It was disturbing, even for you.” You can all hear the worry in McGee’s tone. You’ve been hearing that tone from him quite a bit lately – he stepped up to being Tony’s Senior Field Agent while you were out of commission from the Calling, and he seems to be unable to stop himself now. He reminds you of how Tony is with you. It lightens your heart to hear it. McGee is watching his six.

Tony shrugs it away, and grins. “You worried about me, Probilicious?”

“Get over yourself,” McGee retorts, going to his desk and logging on.

“I’m fine, McWorryWart.”

“This is just fascinating. Someone should write a research paper on this. You have a very interesting brain, Tony DiNozzo,” Bishop tells him. “Abby is going to love hearing this recording.”

Tony groans and you can tell that he is fighting the urge to scrub his hands on his face. He settles for running his hands through his hair, causing it to spike up and undoing his work fixing it this morning.

You can see that he’s had enough and just wants to get back to work. You stand up and all three stand to attention (they are so well trained). “Enough yabba yabba,” you snap at them. “Whaddaya got?”

Tony jumps around his desk (you see him hiding the wince at his injured knee) and begins putting things on the plasma and spouting case-related words, and McGee and Bishop begin to focus on it too. While McGee starts running through his part of the investigation, and Bishop is frowning intently at the screen, Tony catches your gaze and his eyes scream a wordless _“thank you,”_ to you and you incline your head _“welcome”_ in return. In the end, your non-verbal language is something you both fall back on more than any of the many languages that fall out of your very special agent / son’s head.


End file.
